What's Up With Oscar's Best Song Category Anyway?

At the Oscars on Sunday (8 pm/ET, ABC), only three tunes will compete for the Best Song statuette: "Down to Earth" by Peter Gabriel from WALL-E and two songs from Slumdog Millionaire, none of which you had ever heard before they were nominated. How the songs are chosen is notoriously complicated, and the results are always a little suspect. While there have been some legitimate musical masterpieces that have won (Hello, "Moon River"!), it's usually much more random (That Phil Collins dreck from the Tarzan movie over Aimee Mann and South Park? Seriously?). Here's our extremely subjective take on the match-ups through the years — who deserved to win, who pulled a fast one on the Academy and which annoying little ditties will be stuck in your head for hours to come. Take a gander at our lists of the most memorable Best Song winners and nominees — and a few that we think should have been nominated — and then tell us which movie songs are your favorites. (Clicking on each song will take you to a video to refresh your memory.)

1.MOST DESERVING WINSOscar politics be damned: There have been those years where the best song actually won. Kudos, Academy!

2.DESERVING, BUT ANNOYINGThey might have been the best songs of their years, but this group has the undeniable ability to get their sing-songy melodies stuck in our melons for days — and not in a good way.

4.SHOULDA BEEN NOMINATEDHere are a few songs from recent memory that didn't even receive the honor of a nomination, but we think they should have.

"Purple Rain" by Prince from Purple Rain (1984): It's nothing short of a travesty that the soundtrack to Prince's weird semiautobiographical film was snubbed. It's an entire album of gems. (Plus, he sure wasn't going to get to the ceremony for the acting.)"Old Joe's Place" by the Folksmen from A Mighty Wind (2003): We can't pass a diner anymore without thinking: "Ea A Oe's""Let's Duet" by John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer from Walk Hard (2007): John C. Reilly's performance of this double entendre-packed song proves that he is one of our greatest living actors: "I'm going to beat off...all my demons.""Love Take Me Down (to the Streets)" by Joey Curatolo, Amy Miles and Charles Gansa from Role Models (2008): From the Paul McCartney soundalike singer to the perfect Wings vibe, we're still not sure whether Macca wasn't a secret collaborator on this Gansa-penned tune.

5. WHO KNEW?Did you know that Jon Bon Jovi can write "Oscar-nominated" on his epitaph? Neither did we.

7. LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDSSometimes when a really popular musician records a so-so song for a movie, the Academy takes that opportunity to reward the performer for his or her impressive career, in the process amping up the star power at the ceremony.